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The EU-funded project HISTHEOL explored the advent of disinterested scholarship from “dogmatic stalemate”. To elucidate this aspect, it studied history writing from a period of 15 decades beginning in 1517, the year in which Martin Luther’s published the Ninety-five Theses that were to initiate the Reformation. The analysis focused on the working methods of selected authors from England, Germany and the Italian peninsula.
Once the opposing denominations’ respective rules and positions were firmly in place, scholars benefited from a certain leeway to conduct research within this framework and across religious divides, the HISTHEOL team notes.
This development, the researchers add, created scope to approach change and diversity as historical facts rather than issues to settle, enabling authors to let these differences become part of their narratives and thereby paving the way for greater acceptance.
HISTHEOL received funding from the EU’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions programme for a two-year fellowship hosted by the University of York. The project, which ended in August 2017, sought to provide a fresh, historical narrative to bolster the case for mutual recognition and appreciation of diversity in religious debate.
Fellow Stefan Bauer worked on the project with Simon Ditchfield, the scientist in charge of HISTHEOL at the University of York.
In 2016 Bauer and Bethany Hume, also from the University of York, launched an interactive online exhibition “The Art of Disagreeing Badly: Religious Dispute in Early Modern Europe”.